California Republicans Blew It

George Skelton on California GOP legislators' poor discernment:

Republicans...blew yet another chance to be relevant in this blue state by not capitalizing on their clout over a two-thirds vote. A little give here and there and they could have had pension rollbacks, business regulatory relief and even a spending cap. All for just putting a tax question on the ballot.

Democratic legislators essentially did their job. They basically cut in half a $26-billion deficit, mostly with spending cuts principally aimed at the poor, the disabled, the aged and the tuition-paying university students. Republicans wouldn't even vote for all that whacking.

Jerry Rigged

An LA Times article makes claims about the irrelevance of California Republicans that seem unpersuasive at first, since they've apparently just killed Gov. Brown's budget balancing plan.

I do see what the reporters, Evan Halper and Michael Mishak, are driving at. As GOP registration numbers decline, Republicans are relegated t0 a seeming structural minority in the state legislature. Those wanting to do more than be obstructionists end up working with the majority, which results in centrist outcomes that conservative purists consider as bad as purely liberal ones -- worse, because they're even more likely to be enacted.

And so with the state facing the prospect of bankruptcy, a few brave Republicans were willing to talk to Brown about massive budget cuts in exchange for an agreement to continue some expiring taxes and put new taxes on the ballot. It's not that these GOP apostates were voting for new taxes. It's just that they were willing to let us do so. Given Californians' recent disinclination to raise taxes, it would've been a pretty safe bet.

But the purists won, and Brown ended negotiations this week. That's where the Times article comes in. Let's see what the GOP can accomplish in the broad public interest with 30% registration, dwindling numbers in the legislature, and no statewide office holder about the Board of Equalization. And folks, it had better be good.

UC Is Hearing The Brown Sound Again

My guarded optimism that California's new governor, Jerry Brown, would be a Nixon-breaks-the-china fiscal hawk was based on having covered him in the 1970s, when he saddled the elites at the University of California with a series of austerity budgets. Sure enough, as the LA Times reports:

Details of which programs Brown will propose to cut remain unclear. But in private discussions, he has mentioned paring back the state's welfare program, reducing what doctors and healthcare providers are paid to care for the poor, and trimming funding for the University of California and California State University systems.

GOP Ever Going To Win In California Again?

Dream on.

The Iron Political Law Of Immigration Policy

Up to 80% of Latino voters went for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. As their numbers grown in California, the GOP just won't win with candidates who acquiesce in the scapegoating of illegal immigrants.

Can't Tax, Can Spend

The LA Times on the altered powers of the California legislature:

Democrats still won't be able to raise taxes without agreement from some Republicans; a two-thirds vote requirement remains in place for that. Brown has said, in any case, that he wouldn't approve tax hikes unless voters did. And voters made an additional constitutional change Tuesday that took away the Legislature's ability to impose billions of dollars in fees on businesses with a simple majority vote, raising the threshold to two-thirds.

Oh Oh

When Jerry Brown was newly elected as governor of California last night, I persisted in my optimism that he'd go to China -- that, as only a Democrat could (and as Andrew Cuomo vows to in New York), he'd take on entrenched interests such as public employee unions as a way of venturing a structural fix of our state's budget woes. It was a little more than wishful thinking, since, as a student journalist in the mid-1970s, when he was governor his first time, I remembered him saddling the elites at the University of California with a series of austere budgets. He also flirted with my dinner companion one time in La Jolla, but that's another story.

Then news came that Prop. 25 had passed. Deceptively advertised to voters as a way of docking the pay of state legislators who fail to pass a budget on time, its true effect is to permit them to pass budgets by a majority rather than two-thirds vote. A St. John's friend speculated weeks ago that Brown's promise -- "No new taxes without voter approval" -- was a veiled reference to Prop. 25. But I never imagined voters could be tricked into removing the only check on giving our cash-strapped state government a blank one.

In his comments today, Brown's stressing belt-tightening. But one-party rule plus a majority budget vote may well end up meaning substantial income tax increases.

* * *
Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I've been reminded by my St. John's brother Mike Cheever that Prop. 26, which also passed, and other laws prevent legislators from raising most taxes and fees without a supermajority, irrespective of their new authority to pass a budget with a simple majority. I had assumed that Prop. 25's change in the budget rules applied to the revenue as well as the expenditure side.

Mi chiamano Mimi (And JUST Mimi, Please!)

You can tell a California politician anticipates anti-incumbent sentiment when, on the ballot, she declines to state that she's a state Senator.

Feeling A Little Snarky At The LA Times

Two political reporters make a comment reminiscent of being 12:

[Meg] Whitman is going out of her way to criticize as "bunk" a Sunday Los Angeles Times/USC poll that showed Brown leading by 13 points among likely voters.

Her criticism has not extended to other recent public polls, which have consistently shown Whitman trailing Brown by high single digits.

Forever Blue?

Californians just aren't tea drinkers. A new poll suggests that the governor's mansion is well out of reach for Republican Meg Whitman, while the GOP's Carly Fiorina remains eight points behind in her bid for the Senate. The LA Times:

Most of the nation has seen pronounced enthusiasm by Republican voters as the midterm elections approach. In California, however, Democrats have gained strength and GOP motivation has ebbed slightly in the last month, the poll showed. The current standings represent a reassertion of a more typical profile for the state after an election year convulsed by a foundering economy, widespread discontent about the future and record-breaking spending by Whitman, who has dropped more than $141 million of her own money into her campaign.

The Times analysis says that Gloria Allred sank Whitman by holding press conferences featuring a woman who had lied about her immigration status to get a housekeeping job with Whitman and her husband. Nobody cares much for Allred and her tactics (excepting, of course, Mr. Allred and their pets), but if such an obvious setup was enough to upset a candidate's standing with a whole bloc of voters, then she was standing near quicksand already.

The fact is that Republicans have broken their picks with California's Latinos. Some blame former Gov. Pete Wilson. I remember (this was in my Nixon library days) taking a walk with him from his office to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and listening as he complained about the bad rap he said he'd received for supporting an anti-illegal immigrant measure, Prop. 187, when it and he were on the ballot together in 1994. It's true he won reelection. But the GOP has been in especially bad odor with Latino voters ever since.

I'd guess that Wilson, and others in his brain trust who have been advising Whitman, played a part in her shrewd if dangerous decision during the primary campaign to resist veering to the right on immigration by endorsing the Arizona law. Her more overt outreach to Latinos came next. That her housekeeper has evidently cleaned her clock so thoroughly means that if it wants to win, the GOP has a lot more hard work to do with voters who think, rightly or wrongly, they're being scapegoated.

Red Sky In The West

The national angle on the Golden State waxing red, according to Adam Nagourney:

Should [Sen. Barbara] Boxer lose [to Carly Fiorina], it would increase the chances that Republicans could capture the Senate. If that were to happen, this contest could come to be viewed, in the post-mortems of Nov. 3, as the election that captured the sweep of Democratic problems. This is political ground as friendly as any that Democrats could hope for; a Republican has not been elected to the Senate here since Pete Wilson in 1988.

Party Animus

George Skelton:

[O]nly 55% of registered Republicans [in California] have a favorable impression of the GOP; 39% look on it unfavorably. By contrast, 75% of Democrats are favorably impressed with their party.

Take It Like A Whitman

Joanna Weiss is surprised that Meg Whitman, California's GOP gubernatorial candidate, made such a big deal about a Jerry Brown aide's vulgarity:

The notion that the billionaire head of a Fortune 500 company would be crushed — or even surprised — at a little trash talk is absurd. And if she’s somehow deeply wounded by an aide on a cellphone, how would she handle a rambunctious State Assembly? The fact that she can slough off slurs should be a badge of honor — and a model for women who want to play the game.

The Most Devastating Ad Of The Year

"Echo"

Not-So-Poor Poor Meg

More from John Judis's Jerry Brown profile. First, a modern-day iteration of Harry Truman's famous "Poor Ike -- it won't be a bit like the Army" comment about the circumscribed civilian elected executive:

Daniel Zingale, who was deputy chief of staff for former governor Gray Davis and a senior adviser to Schwarzenegger, draws a sharp contrast between the two candidates. Brown, he says, “should know what he is getting into. He has always been someone who liked to rock the boat, and I think that fits the time.” Whitman, he says, “does not have any idea what the job is like ... For a CEOer like her, who is used to telling the comptroller what to do, it would be a rude awakening to discover that the comptroller is going to be running against you in the next election. She doesn’t know how powerless she is going to be.”

And Judis's conclusion:

If Whitman’s money prevails, the legislature will quickly disabuse her of her plans, and if she is smart, she will decide, as Schwarzenegger finally did, to govern from the center and not the right. But if Brown can win in spite of his shoestring campaign, he won’t have to endure a similar initiation—he knows how Sacramento works. He stands a much better chance than Whitman of breaking the fiscal deadlock, and his cleanenergy program could restore California’s place as a vanguard of American industry. And if that’s not enough, there’s another consideration: A Brown administration, whatever its faults, would be infinitely more entertaining.

"The War On Jobs"

Meg Whitman certainly mastered this moment in tonight's debate with Jerry Brown, as reported by the LA Times:

During a discussion of the candidates' prescriptions for curing the economy, Brown jumped on Whitman's proposal to cut the capital gains tax, saying the beneficiaries would largely be wealthy people, including those who have donated $30 million to her campaign.

"How much money will you save if the tax breaks were in effect this year or last year?" Brown asked Whitman.

Whitman demurred but said, "I'm an investor, and investors will benefit from this. So will job creators, and I was a job creator. We have got to get someone in office who knows what the conditions are for small businesses to grow and thrive," she said. "Your business is politics. You've been doing this 40 years and you have been part of the war on jobs in this state for 40 years."

Jerry Brown's Empty Blackboard

The Tea Party notwithstanding, Jerry Brown may be the year's true revolutionary. His moderate Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, is spending a large fortune on elaborate plans and advance men with ear plugs without offering any real hope of being able to do anything to fix California's broken government that wasn't available to the moderate Republican incumbent. According to this Joe Hagan account in "New York" magazine, Brown improvises, stumbles, and promises almost nothing. No more likely to fix the state, probably, but his no-plan plan is somehow refreshing:

Brown’s campaign strategy appears to be, let Whitman spend all her money while Brown leans back and declares her a spendthrift and a dilettante.

Kevin Starr, the USC historian, who went to high school with Brown, calls Brown’s non-efforts a “Zen campaign,” which seems to acknowledge that politics itself, the function and purpose of it, has “been erased in California.” Or, put another way, why have a plan if plans aren’t going to work?

“It’s an empty blackboard,” Starr says.

Still Bluish In California

In California, Republican Meg Whitman, running for governor, has glided to the center, while Carly Fiorina, running for the U.S. Senate, is knee-deep in tea. The LA Times:

"If Meg wins, that's not a big shock. She's kind of like Arnold [Schwarzenegger], and we've had mainly Republican governors" in recent decades, said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC Berkeley. "If Carly wins, that's a big deal.... We're going to have to stop and really think when we say California is a light blue state."

Speaking of which, polls show they're both running behind their Democratic opponents.

Jerry Rigged

Bill Clinton was famous for helping solidify his centrist bona fides by taking what some called the "double death" position -- aggressively pro-abortion and pro-death penalty. A majority of Americans agreed, and Clinton was right there with them. It appears Jerry Brown is serving up the same cocktail in his bid to be elected governor of California:

Brown was a vocal opponent of the death penalty when he served as governor in the 1970s and '80s, once suggesting that banning capital punishment would elevate society to a "higher state of consciousness."

He vetoed the death penalty in 1977, and his chief justice appointee was removed from the bench in the 1980s for her constant overturning of death penalty convictions.

Brown has taken more moderate stances since he ran for attorney general in 2006 and vowed to carry out the laws of the state. His office has been fighting for the resumption of capital punishment and defends death penalty convictions before the state Supreme Court.

Brown remains reliably pro-choice. Clinton's already shown that double-death works politically. What would be interesting if someone, whether Democrat or Republican, ever tried double life: Anti-death penalty and in favor of an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of abortions (without taking away the legal right to choose). It's something you'd expect a principled Jesuit-trained candidate to try -- someone, for instance, like Jerry Brown.

Brown Sound

California's Jesuit-trained Democratic gubernatorial candidate missteps and makes nice:

"I mean Clinton's a nice guy, but who ever said he always told the truth?" Brown told a crowd at the opening of a Democratic Party office in East Los Angeles. "You remember, right? There's that whole story there about did he or didn't he. OK, I did — I did not have taxes with this state."

The last line was an oblique play on Clinton's defense against the brewing sex scandal in early 1998. At the time, Clinton asserted, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." It was later proven that he did, and he subsequently faced impeachment proceedings.

Brown's comments were captured Sunday at an unannounced visit to the Democratic Party office. Video of his comments surfaced on a political news website on Monday. Several hours later, Brown called a news conference and apologized.

"Bill Clinton was an excellent president," Brown said in Oakland. "It was certainly wrong for me to joke about an incident from many, many years ago, and I'm sorry for that."